


Magic Twines Two Hearts

by desperationandgin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 01:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3673002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperationandgin/pseuds/desperationandgin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina dies in a final show down with Cruella. But can something bring her back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Twines Two Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Just read it and don't hate me.

He can feel it. The second Cruella lets fly a fireplace poker, he feels the piercing shock of it, the cold weight. He turns, eyes meeting Regina’s in the dim lighting of the cabin, almost as if in slow motion, afraid of what he’ll see. Her face is frozen in a horrified expression, and she slowly lowers her head to look down. _That_ is when his knees give way, the moment hers do, but he's moving, ignoring the fighting around him now to get to her. There’s blood. More blood than he thinks he’s ever seen before, the poker embedded in her abdomen. He knows better than to pull it out, and all he can do is press his hands to try and staunch the bleeding. Rope still dangles from his wrists left over from being bound by the Dark One, but he is here now, and at a time when words should be pouring out of him, Robin can’t speak. But she seems to know what to say. She always knows what to say.

Her words are wobbly, as if she is a record warped by wear and tear and moving around in drunken circles. “I had dreams. Dreams…about you.”

It’s the first time he’s seen her, but in his dreams, she is always vibrant and strong, sometimes kissing him, sometimes writhing beneath him, but always full of life. “I’m here now. And you have to stay.” This cannot be the second time he’s holding a love in his arms and watching her slip away. He will _not_ let this be her last moment with him.

(Somewhere, Cruella falls to the ground dead, but he hardly notices.)

“I don’t…I don’t think we…” Her voice is thick now, her skin is losing its color, and his heart is slamming even as he feels hers slow. “I don’t…think I get a happy ending.”

“Yes you do,” he insists, his hands covered in sticky red that has to be a cruel joke. She has fought for this, her happiness, and now he’s here, now he’ll never leave again, but she might leave him.

“I love you.”

“Don’t say it now.” She hasn’t before, she wouldn’t, she’d even quited him when he’d tried, and now he refuses to hear it. “Don’t say it when you think this is the end. Hold on, Regina.”

Emma is there then, dropping beside them. “Hang on.”

There is white, there is nothing, and then there is fluorescent brightness as Emma yells for someone to help them in the hospital lobby. Regina’s pulled out of his arms, taken away while he’s still on his knees, and Robin yells now, Killian taking his arm, holding him back, assuring him, trying to promise that they’ll make her well again. That the magic here and the machines that work because of it will save her. Robin almost believes it until something grips his chest, a violent pain, and he doubles over, holding his chest as the pulsing shock ebbs and flows. “What…what are they doing to - “ It happens again, driving him to the floor. He can’t feel  _her_ any longer, he can’t feel her, but he has to see her.

Emma stands in front of him again though, eyes red rimmed and holding onto his shoulders. “They’re shocking her. They’re trying to make her heart…” Emma shakes her head a little. “I don’t know, I just know they’re trying to help her, Robin.”

“It isn’t  _working_.” And with apologies to Emma, he wrenches free of her and sprints down the hallway until he finds the room where Regina’s been worked on, dress shorn from her, body bloody and unclothed, an arm hanging off of the surface she’s on. The wail of one long steady beep keeping everyone frozen in shock.

The Queen is gone; a woman they thought was unbreakable, a woman who had been tortured for days, had saved their town, and been flung through a clock tower, dies.

It’s unacceptable. He won’t let them tell  _him_  that she’s gone and he goes to her, hand grabbing the limp but outstretched coldness of hers, and pleads. Begs, Runs his fingers through her hair (it’s so long. When did it get so long?) and presses his forehead to her temple as he cries. “You can’t do this, Regina.” He repeats it, over and over again, the nurses and doctors letting him until his lips find hers, pressing a desperate kiss to her mouth.

The magic is almost violent. If he wasn’t clinging so desperately to her, Robin’s sure he’d be across the room. It’s bright and thunderous, white and purple, lights flicker and then explode. And then it’s done. It’s as calm as after any storm and then still. Quiet. Until one beep. One beep, and then another. Another, and another, and his eyes find the others in the room who look to each other in shock. The Queen has a pulse, and they begin working again, getting her to surgery and making Robin wait.

He sits with Emma and Killian, and when Snow and David arrive, he registers Emma telling them to leave, that they put Regina’s life in danger, they’re at fault. He wants to grill them, ask them why, ask them what sense it made to put a woman struggling with redemption in the path of darkness again. But he can’t. Because he knows Regina, and he knows, had she not been on board she would have said so. Say what you want about her, but it’s been a long while since she’s been forced to do anything she doesn’t want to participate in. He knows this, and so he remains still and quiet. Emma sits beside him again, tense, but speaks directly to him.

“She had dreams about you. That she…her past self. The Evil Queen, was trying to protect you.”

“I didn’t need the protecting, as it turns out.” He’d been kidnapped, heart ripped out of his chest (that’s already in place again thanks to Regina), but he’s not the one with doctors trying valiantly to save his life.

No one protected  _her_.

It’s two hours before she’s out of surgery. She is stable, minus a spleen, and recovering. When he’s allowed to see her, all he can do is stand in the doorway and stare. He can feel her again, though he’s not sure he’s ever been aware of it before, never knew that they had this, that a connection had been built between their souls, and he rubs a hand over his chest slowly before making his way into the room and sitting heavily. She’s groggy and in and out of consciousness they warned him, but he takes her hand and kisses her knuckles, eyes closed. He sits like that for long minutes, the only sound the beeping he’s come to realize monitors her heart.

“You…kissed me…”

Robin’s head snaps up and when his eyes meet hers (groggy and hooded as they are) he can’t help his tearful smile. “I did.”

“I felt it.” And then she’s asleep again, head lolling toward him on her pillow.

All that he can do now, as he watches her chest rise and fall, is thank whatever magic twines two hearts together. 


End file.
